My first Skydive!

It is something I have always wanted to do and I finally thought 2024 was the year for it.

We went to Langar Skydive, not too far from Nottingham, the area was surrounded mostly by fields and small villages so we knew the view would be good.

Before we went up we watched as others came down and landed in front of us, they looked like birds in the sky and then they floated through the sky until they landed quite smoothly, most of them at least.

Finally it was our turn and our instructors, Kayleigh and Emily came over to give us our jumpsuits and harnesses which isn’t the most comfortable get up and talked us through what would happen.

There were set positions we had to know for certain stages of the fall and we practiced those in the harness so we would remember what to do.

Then it was time to get in the plane, the tiny propeller plane which would take us 14,000 feet up. As we went up my instructor secured our harnesses together and reminded me several times what would happen so I felt very secure and safe.

There were around 10 others who were in the plane as well, they were doing the skydive without an instructor, we assumed they do this for fun or they were training to be instructors. We sat in the plane for about 15 minutes before we got to the right height and everyone started jumping off, I was the last one to go and so I watched as everyone got to the edge and then let themselves fall. They disappeared straight away as you fall at such a speed to begin with.

It was my turn and as I sat on the edge trying to remember where my legs and head were supposed to be, that was the one moment I thought ‘what am I doing?’ That a flittering thought as my instructor fell forwards and we were speeding through the air, I believe the fastest you can fall is around 120mph, it felt faster than that to me but that’s what they say.

As you fall you can then put your hands out and wave to your photographer who is falling in front of you. I could feel the force of the air pushing my arms making it challenging to keep them still at all.

At this point I was thinking I definitely should have taken a hat!

The parachute comes out and you are now falling at a much slower pace and your body is now upright. With this you have the time to take it all in as the weather was sunny and I could see miles around where everything looked so far away still. I enjoyed being able to fly smoothly down thinking about the fact I had just fallen from a tiny plane strapped to another person and how cool that was despite being crazy that we do that for fun. I could start seeing the other people falling below me and landing on the air field looking tiny from where I was.

We landed smoothly which I was glad for and it’s all over like that, a bucket list item ticked off!